…thought the eternal reality was mathematical, and that was the underlying basis of everything beyond space and time, eternal maths. Plato, influenced by the Pythagoreans, had the idea of an eternal world of forms or ideas. The archetypes of everything in…

…forms or ideas. The archetypes of everything in nature exist beyond nature in an archetypal transcendent world. The atomists were against Plato and the Pythagoreans, and they said, no, eternal reality is matter, and matter is made of lots of little bits,…

…it may be unusual from the point of view of conventional science, but it's not unusual philosophically. I mean, after all, Plato believed this. Many philosophers have taken the view that the mind's more extensive than the brain, both within and beyond the…

…Now, this idea is, as I say, shocking and unfamiliar, yet on the other hand, it's been put forward by many philosophers, including Plato. It's believed in many parts of the world. It's taken for granted by children under the age of 10 and is very, very…

…because I don't want to lead to solipsism. So, yeah. Well, this is a very long standing debate, Ali, of course. I mean, Plato dealt with it in his Republic, you know, where he has the philosopher king and the idea that society would be best run…

…spiritual people in charge, as in some of the medieval popes or Renaissance popes, they can easily be corrupted, which is the point Plato raised of if you're going to have these philosopher kings, who's going to keep them on track and how is it going to…

…see in a new way. The two-way theory of vision is, of course, not a new theory, This was a theory put forward by Plato. It was believed by most of the Greek philosophers. It was taught in the Middle Ages. It's believed by Hindus and Buddhists. In…

…be taken for granted. But what I'm suggesting is the view that children have, the view that Eastern sages have, the view that Plato and our European ancestors have, may be much more correct than the mind and the brain theory. So now you're going to hear…

…patterns of things. Now, archetypes are not just to do with psychological archetypes. They're also to do with form. When Plato used this term, he was referring to forms in general, including the archetypes of plants. In modern developmental biology, these…

…look at things, are projected out to where they seem to be. This is not a new theory of vision, of course. It's what Plato thought. It's what Euclid thought. And it's why Euclid was able to explain mirror images in the fifth century BC. in the mirror…

…conscious beings, we still call the planets by the names of the Greek and Roman gods, you know, Venus, Mars, Mercury, etc. And Plato called the planets and the sun the visible gods. He thought they had minds or consciousness which related to us here on…

…a very old idea. It goes back to ancient Greece. And a lot of Greek philosophers were influenced by Pythagoras and Plato, who thought that beyond this world there was a non-material world with eternal truths, especially eternal mathematical truths. And the…

…give rise to the universe we live in. And mathematics is essentially changeless. Numbers, proportions, ratios lead to changeless truths. Plato generalized Pythagoras' idea to the idea that ultimate reality is a realm of forms or ideas beyond space and time.…

…still with us today in many manifestations. The other great classical tradition is that of Aristotle, who was a student of Plato. And Aristotle, unlike most philosophers, was actually a biologist and had a keen understanding of living processes. As I'm sure…

…nature is very unfamiliar in the West because our philosophy has been shaped very much by the Greek tradition and especially by Plato, the idea that there are eternal forms or ideas outside space and time which govern everything in nature. And this took…

…you were, the further you were away from the divine. It was seen as like a hierarchy of being. So a figure like Plato, for example, argued that there could be philosopher queens as well as philosopher kings, because what it required was the soul to be…

…panpsychist or animist, Consciousness is present in all sorts of things, not just animals but also plants, in the stars and the planets. Plato thought that the stars and the planets were, as he put it, visible gods. We still call them by the names of…

…idea that laws and constants of nature are fixed. The idea that laws are fixed is a hangover from Greek philosophy. Plato and Pythagoras thought that the world was governed by mathematical principles beyond space and time, eternal ideas. In the 17th…

…followers, the changeless realm beyond the changing world we experience was the realm of mathematics, of numbers, ratios, and proportions. Plato was very influenced by Pythagoras, but he generalized Pythagoras' ideas to say that the eternal realm was not just…

…from the eyes. Light comes in, yes, they know that, but something goes out too. This was the theory of vision believed by Plato, by most of the great philosophers of Greece and in the Arab world and in the Roman world, and by most medieval philosophers.…

…not a new theory of vision. I claim no originality or credit for this view. It's the view of vision put forward by Plato in ancient Greece. It's the view of vision put forward by Euclid, the great Greek geometer. And Euclid was the person who realized…

…a world of mathematical ideas. This is really a theory first put forward by Pythagoras and his school, which influenced Plato. that the ultimate reality is mathematical. Beyond time and space, there's this mathematical realm of ideas that somehow reflected in…

…are seeing the world, not just humans. This is not a new theory of vision, and I claim no originality for it. It's what Plato taught. It's what the ancient Greeks believed. It's what Euclid had as his basis of his optical theory of vision. It's the way…

…the world, not just humans. Now, this is not a new theory of vision, and I claim no originality for it. It's what Plato taught. It's what the ancient Greeks believed. It's what Euclid had as his basis of his optical theory of vision. It's the way…

…a very old idea. It goes back to ancient Greece and a lot of Greek philosophers were influenced by Pythagoras and Plato who thought that beyond this world there was a non-material world with eternal truths, especially eternal mathematical truths. And the…

…back to your question. Please. In Greek thought, the most important philosopher of life was Aristotle, who was a student of Plato. And Aristotle said that all living things have souls. That's what makes them alive. They're animate. They have a soul. And…

…plants. He meant the earth. The earth was a living thing. The planets were alive for Aristotle and the whole universe. You know, Plato thought of the whole universe as having a soul, the world soul, the anima mundi. So a soul was not something confined…

…idea that laws and constants of nature are fixed. The idea that laws are fixed is a hangover from Greek philosophy. Plato and Pythagoras thought that the world was governed by mathematical principles beyond space and time, eternal ideas. In the 17th…

…are eternal mathematical truths, ratios and proportions and harmonies, which are true everywhere, at all times and in all places. Plato generalized the Pythagorean insight and had the idea that behind everything in the world there's an eternal archetype, Every…

…then there's... I think in mysticism often an epistemological point that you're accessing knowledge some sort of you could go back to Plato and it might be you're accessing the form of the good or it might be that you're accessing divine knowledge of some…

…did think that, I don't know if he still does, Or is there really a realm of consciousness greater than our own? As Plato thought, the Platonic forms were in a realm that transcended this realm, and there was a kind of conscious realm beyond our normal…

…I was just going to say that on the way you described it there, I think it sort of invites the thought that, because Plato thought to know the good is to love it. So he thought that somehow in coming to this intellectual knowledge of the form of…

…of consciousness we're very used to, but traditional peoples have always taken it for granted that consciousness is much more extensive. Plato called the stars and the planets the visible gods because he thought they had intelligence. They were the bodies of…

…then they find themselves floating out of the body, going into the light. Their lives are changed. And these have happened. It's in Plato, the myth of Ur. You know, these people have had these for millennia. And they give this sense of being part of a…

…types of religious experience is not about belief, it's about experience. Certainly. And I don't think there is, save Plato, another philosopher that was more influential on Whitehead than William James. And certainly his huge study, Varieties of Religious…

…the brain, and images are projected out is a very old view of vision. It's found in many of the Arabic philosophers. It's in Plato. It's in Euclid. And it's found all over the world. And it's found in children in our own society until the age of about…

…Ages in Europe, there was a fairly unified philosophy of nature, a holistic view of nature, based on Aristotle and Plato, mainly Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, who Christianized a lot of the Aristotelian thought, based very much on Arabic philosophy.…

…the brain, and images are projected out is a very old view of vision. It's found in many of the Arabic philosophers, it's in Plato, it's in Euclid, and it's found all over the world, and it's found in children in our own society until the age of about…

…a mystery. And it's similar in Greece, the Eleusinian Mysteries, this cave where they went in for these psychedelic rites of passage that Plato and people did. It was a big part of life in ancient Greece. What was that? And the most common theories are…

…comes from subjective experience from people, essentially. And I've heard it many, many times from just the travelers to the United States. Plato, to go back to what I did, he obviously took the kikion, which had substance in order to... There are not…

…is it's not human, strangely. And another word that does a very fascinating about-turn is related. It's the word automaton. Plato even, let alone Aristotle, had talked about that which is automatic. But for him, it meant that which is self-organising,…

…views, which was also in medieval Europe. It was generally taken for granted that the sun and the other stars were conscious beings. Plato thought the sun and the planets were what he called visible gods. We still call the planets by the names of gods…

…a cosmic mind is not a new idea. It was in the ancient world. It was called the world soul or the anima mundi. Plato talked about this in his writings. It was a major feature of Plotinus and Neoplatonism. that the entire cosmos is conscious and has a…

…of the supernatural, for example, or the popularity of stories which are about romantic love, but of course romantic love is just, as Plato said, the initiation for the love of all things and the love of the divine. It hasn't died, but it's not quite…

…many great traditions, but one of them is how can a tragedy also be a comedy? Which again is a great question from Plato. And the point there is that the tragedy is the darkness looked at unalloyed you know without flinching and the suffering and the…

…is not a new idea. The ancients believed in the world soul, the cause of the mind of the universe, the anima mundi. Plato and other philosophers took it for granted. So we may have a completely conscious universe. But then, as we pursue ideas about…

…human level, including throughout the whole cosmos. The ancients believed that the stars and planets were alive and conscious. Plato called them the visible gods, the stars and the planets, with their own minds and consciousness. Medieval theologians thought…

…is projecting out to you where you are. Now, is this just a philosophical view? It is a philosophical view. It's how Plato thought vision worked. It's how Euclid thought that vision worked. And in fact, Euclid was the first person to explain how mirrors…

…I completely agree with that and I think that it helps us understand the ancient Greek philosophers as well because I think Plato is a kind of intermediary step in the move from ancient Egyptian ideas to early Christian ideas. Because I think what Plato…

…Plato is a kind of intermediary step in the move from ancient Egyptian ideas to early Christian ideas. Because I think what Plato tried to do was to develop what had been a pharaonic practice into a philosopher's practice. Because, as he puts many times…

…well in this life through various practices. And there's a tradition, and I'm pretty sure it's right as well, actually, that Plato, after the death of Socrates, went to Egypt. experienced what were the Egyptian initiation rites which by that stage in the…

…going out of their body, traveling through a tunnel, seeing light, and then coming back into the body. They're usually deeply transformative. Plato describes one of these in one of his works. The Venerable Bede in his History of England in the Dark Ages…

…of nature. The idea of eternal laws of nature, mathematical laws, is a very old idea. It goes back to Pythagoras. Plato loved the idea because he thought that ultimate reality was timeless outside space and time. And most mathematicians and physicists today…

…see in a new way. The two-way theory of vision is, of course, not a new theory, This was a theory put forward by Plato. It was believed by most of the Greek philosophers. It was taught in the Middle Ages. It's believed by Hindus and Buddhists. In…

…be taken for granted. But what I'm suggesting is the view that children have, the view that Eastern sages have, the view that Plato and our European ancestors have, may be much more correct than the mind and the brain theory. So now you're going to hear…

…if you have a vision, a vision itself is the movement This thing is not completely new. The wise men in antiquity knew it, Plato and many others, and not only in the European-Antiquity framework, but also in other regions of the world. So it is not so,…

…shaped through consciousness by what he calls ingression. But the notion that there are what Jung would call archetypes, but what Plato calls eternal forms, what the Muslims call the names of God. But these aren't fixed things, unlike Plato. He's not saying…

…archetypes, but what Plato calls eternal forms, what the Muslims call the names of God. But these aren't fixed things, unlike Plato. He's not saying that they exist somewhere. ideal forms, but they are what you would call probability structures, or what…

…when I get to that, when I'm thinking about that, Whitehead doesn't much help, nor is anyone else, because apart from Plato and Euclid, most philosophers haven't really thought about this particular problem. And so I'm... And when I'm dealing with the kind…

…takes us to a philosophical tradition that was very well developed here in Europe among the ancient Greeks and in the Middle Ages. Plato talked in terms of the world soul. The demiurge, there was a kind of mind that created the world's soul, and the…

…would want to stay away from that. in the John Stuart Mill tradition. But I think we're going to have to go back to Plato. Plato did not trust the poets. And the heirs of the poets in our hell, Bardo, are Madison Avenue. Because images are being…

…want to stay away from that. in the John Stuart Mill tradition. But I think we're going to have to go back to Plato. Plato did not trust the poets. And the heirs of the poets in our hell, Bardo, are Madison Avenue. Because images are being manipulated…

…reality was mathematics, numbers, ratios, and proportions. They were beyond space and time and gave rise to the world we live in. Plato generalized that to the idea that the world is made up of eternal forms beyond space and time that are reflected in…

…it is there's nothing to desire if it's the ultimate completion So then theories of creation have to be, as in Plato, kind of emanation theories, that there's a kind of overflowing, a generous overflowing, which gives rise to creation. There are other…

…cave, which involved taking psychoactive substances. We don't know what they were. But this was a pervasive feature of Greek philosophy. And Plato, in his book, the Timaeus, talks about the conscious universe. What he says is, this world came to be in very…

…have souls, animals have souls, the planets have souls, the stars have souls, according to this view. In fact, the Greeks, including Plato, called the stars and the planets and the sun the visible gods. And indeed, we still call the planets by the names…

…then what about the entire universe? The entire universe may have a mind, a mind of the universe, which is exactly what Plato was suggesting in the Timaeus. The entire cosmos may have a mind. And how would its sensory system work? Well, there are…

…not a new theory of vision. I claim no originality or credit for this view. It's the view of vision put forward by Plato in ancient Greece. It's the view of vision put forward by Euclid, the great Greek geometer. And Euclid was the person who realized…